The processing ability of mobile devices, such as telephones and tablet computers, has greatly increased, while the form factor of such devices has generally been reduced in size. As a result, there can be a significant amount of heat generated by the processing elements (such as a processor or system on chip (SoC)) of such devices. Because such devices commonly come in contact the skin of a user, the generation of excess heat can be a significant factor in user comfort. As a result, the power consumed by such devices may need to be limited when used in handheld operation, thus also limiting the performance of mobile devices.
Mobile device users can potentially receive some improvement in user experience and performance when operating a mobile device in a docking mode, in which the mobile device is generally not in contact with the user, without needing to modify the form factor of the device. However, while it is possible to adjust the performance and heat generation of a mobile device depending on the usage of the device, the amount of performance gain is limited, and the adaptive performance does not address the core problem of excessive heat generation from the processing elements.